HOME AGAIN

Home Again is a 2017 American romantic comedy film, written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer in her directorial debut. It stars Reese Witherspoon, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, Pico Alexander, Michael Sheen, and Candice Bergen, and follows a 40-year-old single mother who allows two young brothers and their friend to live with her in her Los Angeles home. The film was released on September 8, 2017, by Open Road Films, and has grossed $31 million worldwide.

Alice Kinney is the daughter of film director John Kinney, who made several prominent personal-focused films in his life but passed away some years ago. As she hits her fortieth birthday, Alice is currently separated from her husband Austen, who has stayed in New York in his role as a music producer while Alice has moved back into her father’s Los Angeles home with her mother Lillian and her daughters Isabel and Rosie, and is attempting to start her own interior design business.

While out for a drink with her friends, Alice encounters Harry, George and Teddy, three aspiring filmmakers in LA to make a pitch to possible producers after a short film they presented at a film festival received positive acclaim. Despite the three being in their late twenties, they hit it off with Alice and her friends, with Alice nearly sleeping with Harry before he passes out from intoxication. The next morning, George discovers a room containing John Kinney’s old scripts and awards and realizes Alice’s family history just as Lillian, Isabel and Rosie return from the girls’ night with their grandmother. Alice takes the girls to school while Lillian offers the young men breakfast, and is so won over by their compliments of John’s old films that she offers them the guest room of the house while they make their pitch.

As the three stay in the house, they all become an important part of Alice’s routine, as she develops a potential romantic interest in Harry while Teddy helps her set up a web site for her business. George encourages Isabel to enter a script-writing contest at school as part of an effort to pursue her own literary aspirations, with Isabel coming to rely on George for emotional support to deal with anxiety issues when it comes to her writing. The three young men also meet with Justin Miller, a director who is interested in funding their own project despite his past work focusing on horror movies. As Alice and Harry grow closer, she invites him to join her for a dinner with a couple of her friends, but Harry has a meeting with Miller about further funding opportunities that runs over, prompting Alice to call off their potential romantic relationship the following morning.

Depressed when she realises that her first potential client has basically been treating her more like general hired help without taking any of her design suggestions seriously, Alice is further thrown when Austen unexpectedly arrives in Los Angeles, claiming that he is uncomfortable about having three strangers living with his family. When Harry learns that Teddy and George have been pursuing independent projects, he becomes bitter at the belief that they have no faith in his own work, prompting him to leave the house. Teddy’s dislike of Austen’s subtle manipulations culminates in a fight between the two just as Alice returns from picking up her daughters from school, but although Alice agrees with Austen that it may be time for the others to move out, she informs Austen that she wants an official divorce. George and Teddy reconcile with Harry and find their own flat, with Harry accepting the other two’s decision to pursue other opportunities on top of their own work.